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Paladin PvP guide
Some tips *Don't spam judgments. It dries out your mana faster than you realize, and it does less damage than if you had just let the seal (be it Righteousness or Command) run its normal course. Sure, it makes it look like you're doing more burst damage, but burst damage isn't how Paladins win. *Don't get discouraged when after a few moments of combat your health is going down faster than theirs. This does not mean you have lost, or that you will lose. The core of the Paladin class is being able to last. With your efficient heals and many ways (via your seals and blessings) to regain health and mana as a fight drags on, you will have it better in the long run than most classes. *Always use the best blessing/seal/judgment for each fight. Most of your victories are ones of endurance. Keeping your mana pool up is crucial. Every one of your abilities requires mana. If you're OOM, then all you've got is your autoattack, and that isn't going to beat anyone. Keep up Blessing of Wisdom in most situations, as more mana is always good to have. Blessing of Might is a fool's gambit, as more attack power isn't going to help you survive the fight, it'll help you do more damage, but it'll never let you rival the damage of any other class, so don't use it unless you know very well you're going to tear through someone. Judge Seal of Wisdom too, as since you're beating on them, you may as well beat some mana out of them. Judgment of the Crusader is nice too, as (especially if you have and use Holy Shock), you'll like the extra spell damage. Seal of Command is nice for some burst damage, but remember that a seal and its judgment will stack to give you more health/mana that one would alone, so if you need some extra health/mana on top of your normal regen, this is a good idea. Learning what Blessings, Seals, and Judgments to use is the most appealing and complex aspects of the class, and there are more opinions on what is best where than there are Paladins. Develop your own groove and learn what you like and what works. *Heal when you need it. Don't wait until your portrait is glowing red to start casting a heal. If you're fighting, and your health is such that you would get the full, or near-full, benefit from a heal, then heal. Don't neglect Flash of Light either. It's arguably the most mana-efficient heal in the game. You can use Flash of Light several times while your foe is stunned with Hammer of Justice, and if you notice that an opponent has foolishly wasted a spell interrupt (such as a Shaman using Earth Shock for its damage) then throw a few flashes of light to make them regret it. Don't get heal-crazy, but don't wait until you're near death to start tending your wounds, either. *Melee, dammit! You are not a mage. Holy Shock and Judgment of Command/Righteousness will not win the day. Get in there with that two-hander and put on the hurt! Paladins may be able to heal, but they can bring the pain too. Retribution (especially post 2.0) have a nice bag of tricks to do good-sized bursts of damage. Crusader Strike with Seal of Command and put a hurt on even the most hardened foe. With decent gear, a Paladin will have a good amount of strength, making their melee hit pretty hard. You may only have autoattack (and maybe Crusader Strike), but with your Seals (and again, combined with the right Judgment) you have what is arguably the best autoattack in the game. Druid Much like paladin vs paladin, this is a very long fight. Try to outlast him via mana. He may try to root you in order to heal, which you can blessing of freedom or cleanse out of. If he's feral, you'll have a pretty easy time. When he comes out to heal, stun him a little after the heal starts. If you have it, repentance works great at interrupting heals. So do grenades. As a feral druid rarely comes out until under 30-50% health, you may have an easy time winning. Also, as a Dwarf Paladin, if you come up against a feral druid who uses physical DoTs - remember to pop your stoneform. Hunter Hunters are well known as currently (1.9) being one of the most annoying PvP classes out there. Their ability to kite (keeping you at long range constantly and firing on you) is very, very annoying. Blessing of Freedom all the time (The 3rd tier protection talent is a must here) to avoid Wing Clips. CLEANSE THE STINGS! A hunter will waste more mana casting a sting than your mana spent cleansing it. Otherwise, just keep attacking, and hope for the best. Another way to approach this battle is head on, and it's scary for the hunter. We can guess that the first thing he'll do is Freeze trap, if you step in that, you'll give him an open invitation for an Aimed Shot or Viper sting, but whats worse you'll give him the opportunity for distance, which means kiting - that's the last thing any class wants when fighting a hunter. So, as soon as the battle starts, duel or otherwise, you want to Shield yourself (the sooner the better) and head towards him. He won't be ready for this, and most hunters will have a whole lot of their combat strategy go right down the tubes. They will waste their wing clip, out of habit (90% of them will), their concussion shot, Freeze trap, scatter shot, and probably viper sting. In other words, when you approach them, take your time - to a certain extent. You want to be close enough so that when your shield goes down you can hit them with your Hammer of Justice, but you don't want to get there too quick, let him spend some mana and get some cooldowns going. Time it so that by the end of your shield he's locked in melee with you. (He knows your shield is up, but most hunters will still use their good shots out of habit, or perhaps panic, the force of habit is one you can count on with most hunters, trust me on this). If he's still running around while your shield is up, and you're having trouble catching up, don't do anything until your shield is down, when it's down use Repentance, or Holy Shock will daze him if he has his aspect of cheetah on, don't forget to cleanse - just in case. Now, when your shield goes down - it's your turn, now it's Hammer of Justice time whack away - and stay close (I use Crusader->Judgement->Seal of Command... But feel free to use your Seal of Justice, that can work nicely as well). Go ahead and put on your Blessing of Freedom - now that you are close, and you'll be able keep it that way, you really should be able to finish the job most of the time, in this manner, with no healing. If he manages to wing clip you while your Blessing of Freedom is still cooling down he should be close enough to use Hammer of Wrath, especially if you've had a couple of lucky procs. Mage Outlast him. A mage with no mana is a dead mage. Pray that he doesn't crit a lot, although there's not much you can do to prevent it though. Just heal, heal, heal some more. Heal early, and beware the counterspell. If you can, cast Blessing of Freedom as mages are very good at getting away with Frost Armor, Nova, and Blink. Mages can keep you at a distance using a large variety of chill and freeze effects as well as the ever annoying polymorph. Use your trinket to escape the sheeping if you can and don't let them get far. If you stay at a distance the mage will blast you into bits and pieces. Protect yourself as much as you can until he runs out of mana. Then destroy him. If you are in melee range early in the battle, you may want to cast seal of justice instead of the usual crusader/command or whatever you use. While many people say it isn't viable for PvP, I find it useful just as a spell interrupt. It procs fairly often, anyways... I would like to point out that mages tend to have a lot of mana, and also have things like mana gems and evocation (which they can use while you're sheeped, for example) to regain nearly a full mana bar. Trying to wait until a mage is out of mana could be a long wait. I agree that you should be healing early and often, but mostly with the aim of whittling down their health whilst healing yourself. Retribution paladins have an extra tool for this fight in the form of Eye for an Eye. Returning 30% of their spell criticals to them will cook a mage fast. Your most profitable aura in this fight is most likely Frost Resistance. Frost spells are what they use to kite you the most, and around 50% of mages are frost talented anyways, aiming for the shatter effect (50% increased chance to crit). Try and figure out what kind of mage you're fighting. If you can be certain he's a fire mage, feel free to put up fire resistance. (Note: Getting the 'ignite' debuff is a good indication you're fighting a mage that relies on his fire spells for damage, even if he does have some points in the frost tree for things like shatter and ice block). Also keep in mind that anything and everything a Mage can stick on you, you can remove with Cleanse, including Ignite. Cutting off the Over Time portion of their already dangerous spell crits can help your survivability in a big way. Paladin This battle will be the longest battle you have ever fought. Unless you somehow manage to get one who has all shields on cooldown, Lay on Hands on cooldown, the stun on cooldown, and no mana. Even then it'll still be a long battle. These battles are entirely about conserving mana, and possibly Trinkets, Profession items, and simple equipment advantages. This fight is far more likely to end from another Alliance/Horde member wandering by than anything either combatant can use or do. Priest A shadow priest is a very formidable character in all PvP situations. S/he will cast several DoT's and then fear you. There are several trinkets to prevent fear. These will usually decide if you can win or not. Holy priests are about average with paladins. Just try to outlast them. And hope they don't use mana-burn. Your rank two PvP trinket is crucial to break the first fear. If the priest is mana burning you, start healing, casting and casting heals. The idea is to use your mana in a beneficial manner before they burn it. Judgement and Seal of Wisdom on the Priest will help a lot. Shadow Resistance Aura is the best one to use, as the most pesky of their abilities are from the Shadow school. Hope that you've got the Unyielding Faith talent for the 10% chance to resist fear. If it works, the priest is in trouble. This is going to be a long fight. However, fighting a discipline priest is even tougher. You will know you are fighting a disc priest when you are hitting them while they are shielded and you are taking a lot of damage when they seem to be doing relatively nothing. Say hello to reflective shield. Added with pain suppression, disc priest are an extremely formidable yet rare foe. Simply heal early and repentance/HoJ simply to get their shield off. Trinket out of fear and whittle their mana down. Very long and arduous fight. It is prudent to throw down Shadow Resistance aura for this fight - both their big Paladin-killing skills are Shadow based (Psychic Scream and Mana Burn), and a resist on either of these spells will benefit you tremendously. And as a bonus, it is undispellable. You can Cleanse everything they throw on you, as well. Just be careful what you're cleansing; a popular Priest tactic is to make you waste mana cleansing a rank 1 SW:Pain, essentially mana burning yourself. Don't count on your bubbles to save you, although feel free to use them to do a full cleanse of their debuffs, and make them waste mana Mass Dispelling you - they just can't seem to resist the novelty of this. Switch to Concentration Aura while healing. Expect a shadow priest to silence you; Improved Concentration Aura will reduce the duration of the silence effect by 30%. Rogue A rogue will generally not take you head-on. Unless they have epic gear, a rogue that attacks while a paladin has full health + mana = a dead rogue. If you see a rogue from far away suddenly disappear, use perception (if you are a human). If you can, jam the hammer of justice button while they come in. You should be able to stun them before they get off the cheap shot. You may want to save it for healing later though, as a rogue will always try to interrupt your heals. Be sure to Purify any poisons the rogue may use. Retribution Aura helps for making sure the Rogue takes damage from when it hits you. Prior to 2.0, if you went far enough into the protection tree (Although very few do after 1.9) and had Reckoning, the rogue was dead. Period. An extra 400-500 damage each crit? A rogue tries to crit every third or fourth attack. Thats basically doubling your attack rate. Post 2.0, Protection spec still makes fighting a rogue very easy. Using Holy Shield, Retribution Aura, Consecration, and Blessing of Sanctuary, you take very little damage and your reactive and AoE spells do as much if not more than your auto attack. Keep Holy Shield up, as the rogue attacks fast enough that he will almost always use all of the charges. Stun him when you need to heal, and don't worry too much about being stunned yourself, as with all your armor you don't take very much damage, and even when you're stunned, you're still doing quite a bit of damage to him every time he melees you; if it gets too hairy you can just bubble. In fact, with Improved Hammer of Justice, you basically have as many stuns/bubbles as you need, and then some. When you're not stunned, his constant attacks will keep Redoubt (which will mitigate much of his damage due to low damage/high attack rate type of fighting) and Reckoning (which will double your autoswing damage) up almost constantly. This is the easiest fight you can have with the exception of a fury warrior. Laugh when a rogue Cheap Shots you. Another option (useful especially for flag-guarding) is to use consecration to detect the rogue. The damage will take him out of stealth, and prevent the all annoying backstab/ambush. A consecrate level one will do it, as its a famous spell for emptying your precious mana pool. You can make a very simple macro for this that decides which consecrate to use based on whether or not you are in combat. With any amount of mana/5 at all, you can spam Consecrate (Rank 1) non-stop and still stay topped off. If you're an Alliance Paladin, Seal of Vengeance is a great seal to use as the DoT thats applied from your swings can stack. Judging this seal can cause it to cause more DoTs. However, this can be resisted if the Rogue is Subtlety specced. The only disadvantage with this, is that it can be pretty slow, as this seal relies on your weapon swings/speed. Another little tip for Dwarf Paladins, which not everyone realises: use stoneform to get out of Blind & stop them bandaging up. Stoneform can obviously be used against bleeding effects as well, which can also be handy, since many rogues like to use DoTs against plate wearers, but personally I've always saved it in case they use Blind - you shouldn't have too much trouble until then anyway. Shaman First off: this battle will be ENTIRELY about outliving the Shaman's mana pool. Regardless of your talents, you've got them rocked in the healing game, and your mana pool should outlive theirs. Their mana pools are very small, their heals inefficient (though fast), and damage low compared to mages/warlocks. Devotion is your aura choice as you've got nothing against Nature spells, and the token amount of damage from Retribution aura is pitiful. Blessings aren't going to last long, as the first thing a smart Shaman or even an okay one will do is Purge you one or two times to get rid of your active blessing, seal, and anything else. Casting a seal later in the fight will normally work, as they often don't bother with Purge after the first few. If they don't purge a seal, try rebuffing with Blessing of Wisdom. These tactics will leave you facing him in melee with him OOM, and you hopefully with some mana left. Second point: DON'T LOSE YOUR COOL. This fight at first appears hard, but you can take the win pretty easily. Your weapon configuration is most likely going to be one-handed and a shield to keep out pesky swings from Windfury weapons. A Shaman attempting to beat you in melee combat is putting himself on losing ground. Also, a fast one hander can pop totems almost as fast as they're dropped, resulting in a Shaman with much less mana to little/no effect. If your one-hander is slow, use Seal of the Crusader to fix that. Then you can beat the Global Cooldown on him dropping totems with your hitting them. You're going to be letting him/her have the initiative. Frost Shock means that it's time to heal, and being Earth shocked means you can run freely up and hit him. Maybe not for much, but it's something. However, a smart shaman will not blow their mana on shocks unless its to interrupt your heals or to stop you escaping. Even without shocks, their damage will generally be better than yours so they will simply melee you down and then earth shock you when you try to heal (perhaps using this window to try to finish you off with nature`s swiftness + chain lightning or a Stormstrike). The key is therefore to heal early and often, expecting to be earth shocked. Don't expend mana to damage him, this is a battle of mana endurance unless one of you is incompetent. If the Shaman gets low on health, they'll use that very, very fast heal of theirs rapidly and be back up in no time. Then you're low on mana, the Shaman is lower on mana, and you being low on mana means you've lost. Put a Judgement on the Shaman. They can remove magic on you, but not on themselves. This allows you the effect of a seal in the fight. Wisdom's the most profitable judgement, especially if you're a Retribution Paladin with Crusader Strike. If you have both Blessing and Seal of Wisdom active, you can get a huge edge in the mana game. Your offensive starts when the Shaman is out or nearly out of mana. You've survived to this point, and even if you're low on mana when the Shaman is, you're down to a melee fight. Your plate + shield beats the Shaman's mail + shield. And then, when engaged in melee you can regenerate mana super quickly with Seal/Judgement of Wisdom. GG, Shaman. Warlock With 3 diverse talent trees, a warlock's style of play can vary, depending on their spec. Destruction warlocks can be compared to a mage, with their heavy crits and burst-damage. Demonology warlocks relies more on their demons, with them being more powerful and giving bonuses to the warlock. A felguard is usually the most obvious sign for a demonology-specced warlock, while the Soul Link buff is a good indicator of one. Affliction warlocks are usually tricky, filling you up with dots while kiting you using Curse of Exhaustion. They usually possess an instant-cast version of Howl of Terror, their aoe fear, and the ever-nasty Unstable Affliction and can even occasionally bombard you with instant Shadowbolts thanks to their Nightfall talent. Shadow Resistance Aura is the best one to use, as the most pesky of their abilities are from the Shadow school. Hope that you've got the Unyielding Faith talent for the 10% chance to resist fear. Use your trinket to break fear, and use the shield to break the second fear, and you should be able to get close enough to stay in range and stun / kill the warlock. Commonly, a warlock has either a succubus or a felhunter out in battlegrounds. If it`s a succubus, the tactic will be to seduce you first, get range, then cast immolate, corruption and curse of agony, then fear. Cleanse the dots as often as you can and again, heal early and often. A good warlock will cast curse of tongues on you when he sees you healing (or preemptively) and many warlocks have shadowburn to finish you off quickly if you are low on health. Holy shock/Judgement of Light can help, as these are instant cast. If s/he has an imp out, kill it first (also rejoice, because this means that they are either out of shards or incompetent). 3 blows should do it. Beware the felhunter, its spell lock ability is one of the most annoying ones in the game. (It takes out a school of magic for 6 or 8 seconds depending on rank). Paladins only have one school of magic (holy). If, by completely random circumstances, they summon a inferno or doomguard don`t worry, these pets look impressive, but are not very powerful. Be warned, a common tactic of warlocks and shadow priests is to cast a ton of DoTs and fear you, letting your health tick away. Heal only when the warlock is stunned or if you know the fear is on a cooldown (Edit: fear has no cooldown, but the Howl of Terror and Death Coil do). A very difficult fight though. It should be noted that affliction warlocks usually has access to Unstable Affliction, a dot which deals a good amount of damage to anyone that dispels it. In addition, unlike the dot itself, the damage received from dispelling it CAN crit. Most classes will have to wait for the dot to run its course, which means that the other dots will chew up a considerable amount of your health before it runs out. Luckily, unlike most classes, you can use Purify to fix this problem, since it removes the dot instead of dispelling it and avoid the nasty side-effect altogether. Also demonology warlocks have a significant disadvantage against paladins because of exorcism. Usually, it allows you to quickly take out their demon and the rest of the fight becomes easy as pie. Warrior 1v1, with about equal gear and skill level, a paladin will beat a warrior. All one has to do is outlast the warrior. Try to pull off a fake heal at around 60% or so. In the worst case scenario, the warrior will not intercept and you'll begin again at full health. You have a mana pool, use it. Although not as useful against warriors, reckoning is still a pretty usable skill. The biggest danger a Warrior poses is Mortal Strike (if their talents permit). -50% to healing effects can doom you if you let them get it at the wrong time. Trying a fake heal early can lure it out of them. Start casting again when the time remaining on the Mortal Strike debuff is less than your casting time. This ensures they can't renew it. If desperate, either bubble will remove it. Warriors against protection paladins are completely outclassed. Turn on all your reactive abilities and AoE spells and laugh as the warrior beats himself to death. The warrior will take the full blow from all your reactive abilities as holy damage is unmitigated by armor. After about twenty seconds of him proccing Reckoning for you and pummeling himself to death, throw the hammer and dust your hands off; don't be surprised if you're still nearly topped off and ready to take on the next opponent. Category:Paladins Category:Tactics Category:PvP